Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: The PSI Sets a New 52-Week High, UBS Puts Lisbon on Its Bubble List, Galp Answers the Windfall Tax

Tuesday was the quieter half of a two-day recovery. The PSI opened above Monday's close, reached a level it has never closed at, and then drifted for six hours without ever threatening to turn negative. The session's whole range was 57 points, less than half of Monday's. What made the difference in Lisbon was not the macro backdrop, which was mixed, but two heavyweight names moving on their own news: EDP Renováveis and Jerónimo Martins, the latter on an investment bank's change of mind. Away from the tape, the Swiss bank UBS added Lisbon to its global list of housing markets with inflated prices, a court in Trás-os-Montes handed a hydroelectric operator another tax defeat, and Galp broke its silence on the levy the government wants to charge it.

The PSI Set a New 52-Week High at 10:56, Then Spent the Rest of the Day Giving It Back

The PSI closed at 9,656.71 points, up 39.32 points or 0.41 percent, on Euronext's own figures for the index, stamped 22 September at 17:05. It was the second consecutive session of gains.

The shape of the day is the opposite of Monday's. The index opened at 9,672.32, which was already 54.93 points above Monday's close of 9,617.39, climbed to 9,689.68 at 10:56, and then spent the remaining six hours of the session slipping. It finished 15.61 points, or 0.16 percent, below its own opening level. The low of 9,632.55 came at 08:21, in the first half hour, and the entire high-to-low range was 57.13 points, compared with 122.44 on Monday. This was a morning market that ran out of reasons after lunch.

Two records are worth separating here, because they moved in different directions. Euronext's 52-week range for the index now reads 7,704.01 to 9,689.68, and that upper figure is today's 10:56 high. On Monday evening the same field read 9,671.11. So the index set a new 52-week high this morning. It did not set a new closing high: 9,656.71 is 14.40 points, or 0.15 percent, below the 9,671.11 at which the index closed last Thursday. The record on the screen and the record in the record books are now two different numbers, 33 points apart.

Taken together with Monday, the two sessions have recovered 114.50 points of the 128.90 the index lost on Friday, which is 88.8 percent, recomputed here. The broader PSI All-Share rose 0.61 percent, slightly more than the blue chips; on Monday it was the other way round.

Ten constituents rose and six fell, with none unchanged.

Every one of those sixteen lines was reconciled here against our own table from Monday: each closing price divided by Monday's close returns the percentage Euronext reports, to the third decimal. One correction is needed to the coverage elsewhere. Jornal de Negócios' closing report gives Corticeira Amorim at "6,01 euros" for a gain of 1.01 percent, which cannot be right: the cork company closed Monday at 6.94, and 6.94 multiplied by 1.0101 is 7.01, which is the figure on Euronext's own list. We have used 7.01. It is a transposed digit in an otherwise accurate report, and it is the kind of thing worth checking before you act on a price.

Lisbon was the best of the European markets that closed today. On ECO's figures, Paris rose 0.20 percent, Madrid 0.15 percent and Frankfurt 0.01 percent, while London fell 0.29 percent. The PSI's 0.41 percent beat all four, which is unusual enough to say plainly: Lisbon does not often lead Europe, and when it does the reason is normally two or three large names rather than breadth. That was the case today.

Jefferies Moved Jerónimo Martins to Buy, and the Retailer Put On 2.29 Percent

Jerónimo Martins, the owner of Pingo Doce in Portugal and Biedronka in Poland, was the second-best performer on the board, closing at 18.30 euros. The reason is a research note rather than a company announcement. Jefferies raised its recommendation on the shares to buy and lifted its price target to 21.00 euros from 18.00, according to a note seen by Bloomberg and reported by Jornal de Negócios. At Monday's close that target implied upside of a little over 17 percent across twelve months; at tonight's close of 18.30 it implies 14.75 percent, recomputed here.

It is the second target revision on the stock inside a week. AlphaValue and Baader Europe moved their own number last Thursday. The shares have now risen on three of the last four sessions, and at 18.30 euros they are above the 18.00 that Jefferies itself had as a target a week ago, which is the practical meaning of an upgrade: the old ceiling has become the floor of the new argument.

The move deserves one piece of context that the research note does not supply. Eight days ago Poland's competition regulator fined the group 525 million zloty over a no-poach arrangement covering lorry drivers, a penalty falling on the Biedronka business that supplies most of the group's revenue. The market has evidently decided that a one-off fine does not change the earnings case. Readers holding the stock should note that the two judgements are compatible but not identical: an upgrade is a statement about the next twelve months, not a verdict on the regulatory file.

Ahead of it, EDP Renováveis rose 2.96 percent to 13.22 euros, the best performance on the index. Its parent EDP rose 0.85 percent to 4.855. The two energy names between them did roughly as much work as the retailer.

BCP Was the Worst Name on the Board Two Days After a Ratings Upgrade

Banco Comercial Português, the only listed bank on the Portuguese market, fell 1.60 percent to 1.1675 euros and finished bottom of the table. That is two sessions after DBRS lifted its senior unsecured debt rating to A, an upgrade the shares greeted on Monday with a gain of 0.89 percent and have now more than surrendered.

The arithmetic is worth doing. BCP closed Friday at 1.1760. It is now at 1.1675, so across the two sessions that contained a ratings upgrade the stock is down 0.72 percent. This is a useful reminder about what a credit rating is for. DBRS was making a statement about the probability that bondholders are repaid. Equity holders are paid after bondholders, and a rating that says the bank is safer says nothing about whether it will earn more. The two audiences are not the same audience, and Monday's small gain was probably the sentiment, not the substance.

Behind BCP, NOS fell 1.35 percent to 5.475 euros, unwinding rather less than half of Monday's 3.16 percent gain. CTT slipped 0.79 percent to 6.30 and Semapa 0.48 percent to 20.90. The Navigator Company was fractionally lower at 3.258, a fall of 0.06 percent, which on a 3.26 euro share is two tenths of a cent.

Six of Seven Yields We Track Rose, and Portugal's Rose the Least of Them

Government bonds sold off almost everywhere, but gently, and Portugal came off best of the sellers. On TradingEconomics figures stamped 22 September and read this evening, the Portuguese ten-year yield rose 0.9 basis points to 3.83 percent. That was the smallest increase among the six benchmarks that rose.

All the gaps in that last column are computed here from the displayed yields. The spread to the German Bund stands at 36 basis points and narrowed fractionally on the day, because the Bund rose more than the Portuguese bond did. The number that still surprises people is the French one: France now pays 68 basis points more than Portugal to borrow for ten years, and it moved furthest of anyone today. Greece was the only benchmark to fall, by 0.6 basis points, and it remains 38 basis points above Portugal.

The American ten-year rose 2.5 basis points to 4.98 percent and so remains, just, below 5 percent. Elsewhere on the Portuguese curve, the 52-week bill yields 3.00 percent and the twenty-year 4.26 percent.

On Euribor there is still nothing new to report as of this evening. The newest complete column on euribor-rates.eu remains Monday 21 September, when all five tenors rose against Friday: the twelve-month to 3.354 percent from 3.343, the six-month to 2.991 from 2.978, the three-month to 2.624 from 2.620, the one-month to 2.488 from 2.473 and the one-week to 2.393 from 2.357. Tuesday's fixing had not been posted when this went out. For anyone on a variable-rate mortgage, the direction of travel for a fortnight has been quietly upward at the short end.

Oil Rose on a Hormuz Offer in the Morning and Handed the Gain Back by the Evening

The euro fell against the dollar. The European Central Bank's reference rate for 22 September is 1.1463 dollars, down from 1.1490 on Monday, a fall of 0.24 percent that ends the single day of respite the currency had after seven consecutive sessions of losses. Against sterling the fixing was unchanged at 0.85780 pounds.

Oil had the more interesting day. Crude rose about 1.7 percent in the European morning, on ECO's reading, after an Iranian government official told the Japanese news agency Kyodo that Tehran had offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if Washington took initial steps to ease military pressure. "There is a possibility of moving towards an agreement," the official said, conditional on the United States showing "seriousness and commitment". That is an offer, not an agreement, and the market treated it accordingly: by this evening TradingEconomics had Brent at 100.36 dollars a barrel, essentially flat on the day, and West Texas Intermediate down 0.73 percent at 91.70. Brent remains 7.7 percent lower over the week and 64.9 percent higher for the year to date. Natural gas rose 3.36 percent and petrol futures 1.27 percent.

Galp, the name on the index most exposed to all of this, rose 0.23 percent. That is now four straight sessions in which the oil company has moved very little regardless of what crude has done, which continues to be the honest summary of the relationship.

One macro release worth logging: the European Commission's preliminary September estimate, published by its Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), put euro area consumer confidence at minus 16.5 points, a fall of 1.0 point on the month, and the European Union figure at minus 15.8. It ends four consecutive months of improvement running from May to August.

UBS Puts Lisbon on Its Global Bubble List for the First Time, in Seventh Place of 23

The Swiss bank UBS published its Global Real Estate Bubble Index for 2026 this morning, and Lisbon appears on it for the first time, in seventh place among the 23 cities covered. The index measures how far house prices have drifted from what local economic fundamentals would support. Lisbon sits in the "elevated risk" band, alongside Miami, Dubai, Seoul and Geneva. Only Zurich and Tokyo are placed in the top band of outright high bubble risk.

The bank's explanation is uncomfortable reading, because it points at policy rather than at the market. Measures designed to attract foreign capital and new residents, UBS says, fed the capital's property boom to the point where real house prices rose almost 7 percent a year over the past decade, the fastest of any city in the group, and a further 10 percent since the middle of last year.

The affordability figure is the one to carry away. A skilled service-sector worker in Lisbon needs roughly ten years of income to buy a 60 square metre flat near the city centre. Only six cities in the index are worse on that measure: Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, London, Seoul and Singapore. Lisbon is now being compared with that list, not with Madrid or Milan.

What makes the finding awkward is that UBS thinks the engine is already cooling. "As Lisbon has become one of the least affordable housing markets in Europe, the main growth drivers are weakening," the report says. "A policy shift towards more selective immigration has contributed to negative population growth, rent growth has stagnated and demand is shifting to more affordable areas outside the city." In other words the bank is flagging a risk of inflated prices at the same moment as it identifies the reasons those prices may stop rising, which is precisely the configuration that makes a correction possible rather than merely a slowdown.

Across the euro area the picture is uneven: imbalances rose over the year in Lisbon, Madrid and Milan, rose modestly in Paris, and fell in Frankfurt, Munich and Amsterdam. Average inflation-adjusted price growth across all 23 cities was 0.5 percent over the year, down from 1.4 percent in mid-2025. The authors, Claudio Saputelli and Matthias Holzhey of the UBS chief investment office, also note that the market is polarising within cities, as wealthier households convert stock market and artificial-intelligence gains into larger deposits and outright cash purchases, pushing the prime segment ahead of the rest.

Read it against this morning's national figures, which had existing homes 18 percent dearer than a year ago while purchases by buyers with foreign tax addresses fell 10.3 percent. The two datasets are measuring different things and agree on the important one: prices are still climbing, and the foreign demand that helped lift them is thinning out.

A Mirandela Court Backed Torre de Moncorvo Over the Baixo Sabor Dam, and the Council Is Owed 2.3 Million Euros

The Tribunal Administrativo e Fiscal (Administrative and Tax Court) of Mirandela has ruled for the municipality of Torre de Moncorvo and against Movhera, the operator of the Baixo Sabor dam, upholding the revaluation of the dam for property tax purposes. The judgment was handed down on Thursday and released by the council on Tuesday.

The figures are specific. In 2025 the council succeeded in raising the dam's valor patrimonial tributário (taxable property value) from 188,584,430 euros to 249,931,190 euros. Movhera appealed, asking the court to annul both the valuation and the resulting property tax assessments. The court refused. The annual IMI bill on the dam therefore rises from 433,744.18 euros to 574,841.73 euros, an increase of 141,097.55 euros a year, or 32.5 percent, computed here.

Because the decision takes effect from 2022, the council says it is entitled to a first instalment of 2,299,366.92 euros plus interest on late payment. For a municipality of Torre de Moncorvo's size, that is a serious sum. Its mayor, José Meneses, called the case "a just fight" and said the council knows it will win. Movhera, asked by Lusa, repeated that it "does not publicly comment on court decisions". The council itself notes that the ruling can be appealed and that it expects Movhera to appeal, so no money changes hands yet.

This is the fourth favourable judgment the Mirandela court has issued this year to councils in the Bragança district, after Miranda do Douro, Mogadouro and Carrazeda de Ansiães. All of them trace back to the same transaction: EDP's sale of six Trás-os-Montes dams, at Miranda do Douro, Picote, Bemposta, Baixo Sabor, Feiticeiro and Tua, for 2.2 thousand million euros to a consortium led by Engie, completed at the end of 2020. The tax consequences of that deal have been litigated ever since, and the tax authority began billing the transaction itself last month. Today's ruling is a separate front in the same campaign: not the tax on the sale, but the annual tax on the assets that were sold.

Galp's Co-Chief Executive Gives the Windfall Tax Its First Public Answer

Galp has responded publicly for the first time to the government's plan to tax its excess profits, and the response is best described as courteous notice.

João Diogo Marques da Silva, who shares the chief executive's job with Maria João Carioca, was asked about the levy by RTP Antena 1 on the margins of an event in Rio de Janeiro. He began by saying the company has always met its tax obligations, then added the sentence that matters: "Another thing is that Galp has always fought for its rights, so when that becomes known, and I think we are getting ahead of a subject." He went on: "It is very important to us that there is fiscal stability. For us, stability and the moment at which we take decisions of this size are decade-long investments." He linked it to Brazil, where the company's Tupi field is twenty years old, arguing that a stable tax and regulatory regime is what makes projects competitive in geographies that compete for capital.

The proposal he is answering was tabled on 15 September. It would impose an extraordinary 33 percent levy on oil companies whose 2026 profits exceed the average of the previous two years by more than 20 percent, and it applies to that single tax year only. The government's justification is the effect of rising fuel prices on households and firms, set against what it calls exceptional margin growth in extraction and refining. We covered the levy when it was first announced in August.

One design detail in the bill is worth understanding, because it decides how much money the tax actually raises. ECO reports that the draft uses first-in, first-out accounting to measure the excess profit. With oil prices rising, first-in first-out inflates the reported accounting gain, because cheaper barrels bought earlier are matched against revenue earned at today's prices. A larger reported profit means a larger base, and a larger base means more revenue for the state. It is a technical choice with a straightforwardly fiscal purpose, and it is the sort of provision that gets litigated. Marques da Silva's remark about always having fought for the company's rights should probably be read in that light.

Spain Wants Data Centres Matched to Renewables Hour by Hour, and the Industry Is Naming Portugal

A draft Spanish decree on data centres has set off an argument that could send investment across the border, and the industry is saying so openly.

The proposal, which was out for public consultation until 10 September, would require any Spanish data centre with a grid connection of 1 MW or more to cover at least 80 percent of the electricity it consumes in each hour with renewable generation contracted for that same hour. Hourly matching is a much harder standard than an annual renewable purchase, and the draft tightens it further: only renewable plants that came into service no more than 18 months before the data centre starts up may count towards the quota, which excludes very nearly all the renewable capacity already built in Spain.

The penalties are the part that alarmed the sector. A data centre with additional renewable generation below 20 percent of annual consumption would see its grid access tariffs increased by 500 percent. Failing the hourly correlation requirement with a figure under 20 percent would mean a 50 percent increase, rising by ten percentage points for each additional consecutive month of breach.

Emilio Díaz, president of the trade body Spain DC, told the Spanish newspaper Expansión that the association estimates 80 to 90 percent of the investment planned for coming years, some 55 thousand million euros, could fall away, and that three international companies preparing Spanish projects have already said they would go elsewhere if the decree is approved. "France and Portugal could be the destination for the investment leaving Spain," he said. Spain DC declined ECO's request for an interview while the regulatory process continues.

The Portuguese response was notably cool. Luís Pedro Duarte, president of Portugal DC, told ECO he thinks the Spanish industry "uses this as a form of pressure", and stressed that "Portugal did not become attractive to this sector only because of this draft law" next door. He accepts there is "receptiveness to hosting more investment" here and that "there may in fact be more possibility of capturing that investment", but added: "we are not in a position of greed, wishing them ill so that investors come here." His criticism of Madrid was procedural: consulting the market at the end of the process, he said, is "listening at the end of the line".

Portugal does not impose anything close to the Spanish hourly requirement, but nor is the door held open indefinitely. The main control here is the bond required under the 2025 revision of the rules for exceptional grid-connection awards in high-demand zones, which cannot be less than 13,500 euros per MVA, a measure aimed at stopping speculation in land that already carries a grid licence. The infrastructure minister, Miguel Pinto Luz, said in July that the government wants "productive" data centres and does not intend Portugal to become "almost the rubbish dump of Europe"; in May he put the number of installation requests at 40. Miguel Stilwell, chief executive of EDP, referred to the Spanish decree at an internal company event last week, noting that data centres there "now have to have their own generation, and the bars for correlation are very high". Readers following this file should also see last week's report on the two projects beside the old Pego coal plant asking for more grid capacity than they were granted. Grid capacity, not tax, is the binding constraint on this side of the border.

Novobanco Brings Cathie Wood's ARK Funds to Portuguese Investors on Wednesday

Novobanco has launched four exchange traded funds from ARK Invest, the American manager founded and run by Cathie Wood, and says it is the first to distribute them in Portugal. They go on sale on Wednesday 23 September through the bank and through Banco BEST.

The four are ARK Innovation UCITS ETF, ARK Artificial Intelligence and Robotics UCITS ETF, ARK Genomic Revolution UCITS ETF and ARK Space and Defence Innovation UCITS ETF. Elisabete Pinto Pereira, who heads the bank's wealth and protection department, said being first to offer them "reinforces the commitment of Novobanco and Banco BEST to giving clients access to the best international investment solutions".

A note of temperance is in order, since the marketing will emphasise the manager's early calls on Tesla, Nvidia and Palantir. These are concentrated, high-conviction thematic funds whose historic returns have been dramatic in both directions. The UCITS wrapper is a European regulatory format, not a risk reduction. Anyone tempted by the artificial-intelligence framing should look at the funds' drawdowns as carefully as at their winners.

Tomorrow

The immediate event is tonight rather than tomorrow: Prime Minister Luís Montenegro is due to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, reviving a habit that lapsed about a decade ago and that Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, Isabel Castelo Branco and Carlos Moedas have all performed before him, as we reported on Friday. For the tape, the questions on Wednesday are whether Lisbon can make a third consecutive gain and finally convert this morning's intraday record into a closing one, which needs 14.41 points, and whether the ARK launch draws any visible retail flow. Watch the oil price for confirmation or denial of the Hormuz offer, since a genuine agreement would take more out of Brent than a rumour of one already has, and watch Tuesday's Euribor fixing when it posts. Movhera's response to the Mirandela ruling is the other thing to look for, and on the council's own expectation it will be a notice of appeal.